WND EXCLUSIVE

Stockman: Border bill's 'a trap'

Lawmaker claims House legislation plays right into Obama's hand

Garth Kant is WND Washington news editor. Previously, he spent five years writing, copy-editing and producing at "CNN Headline News," three years writing, copy-editing and training writers at MSNBC, and also served several local TV newsrooms as producer, executive producer and assistant news director. He is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, "How to Write Television News."

WASHINGTON – Not all conservatives lawmakers are happy with the border-fix bill that the House just passed.

In fact, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas told WND he believed it was a terrible mistake.

“Instead of the border crisis being all Obama’s fault, now we’re going to take responsibility for it,” he insisted.

The exasperated Texan explained he was sure that Hispanics would now hold Republicans responsible for the border mess.

Did he think it would have been better not to have any bill?

“Yes! Absolutely!” Stockman shot back vehemently.

“Right now, Obama has his lowest numbers ever, thanks to his immigration policy. Now we’re going to get the blame.”

The congressman explained the Republicans had just handed the Democrats a club they could use to beat them in November.

“They’re going to tell Hispanics, ‘Hey they’re going to send you back, and all that stuff.’ They will just use this as propaganda to beat us up in the Fall.”

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas

Although well-intentioned, he thinks Republicans lost sight of the big picture, and that this wasn’t about immigration, it was about the upcoming election.

“This is to gin up the vote, which is the very thing I told my colleagues. Nothing more than a Democrat plan to get out of the vote and we are falling into this trap. They are going to play this for everything they can in the fall elections.”

Stockman explained how he felt the bill would cause a shift in perceptions.

“It was Obama who had all the blame, he was insincere, drinking beer and shooting pool. Now, we’re the target.”

WND said the bill made other conservatives hopeful, because now they had a plan and Republicans were united, and that would allow them to turn the tables on the Democrats for not having passed their own bill.

Stockman disagreed, saying “This is exactly what Democrats wanted. Republicans played right into their hands. We shouldn’t have been playing this game. This is the frickin’ president’s irresponsililty.”

He referred to a press conference Friday morning held by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and said, just as he had predicted the day before, the Democrats would say the border mess is all due to the fact that “Republicans hate children.”

Noting the press conference was broadcast live to Hispanic television stations around the country, Stockman termed it a “disaster.”

Calling it “exactly what Democrats wanted,” Stockman noted the speakers described “how the GOP was trying to destroy the Hispanic community.”

As WND reported, Democrats at the press conference claimed the GOP is “mean, vile, destructive and hateful” to Hispanics.

“This press conference was outrageous. We’ve got to realize there is a grand plan to what Obama is doing. I think it would be better if we’d never touched the bill, because right now the poll numbers for the president are going through the basement, primarily because of immigration.”

So, he was not opposed to what was in the House bill, he just thought approving any bill at all would be political suicide?

“Yeah. We are handing Obama a victory. This is what he wanted so he could go out and gin up the Hispanic vote.”

Stockman noted, historically, Hispanics do not turn out to vote in great numbers in off-year elections. “We just gave them a reason to vote. They had been holding Obama to blame.”

He said if the Hispanic vote increased in November by just 5 percent it would have a huge implication across the nation.

Stockman had one more reason to dislike the bill. He said if the Senate does take it up after the August recess, and it gets sent to conference to formulate a compromise, it will give both GOP and Democratic leaders just the opening they need to insert an amnesty provision into the bill.

“We’re not just driving the car into a ditch. In fact, we’re saying, ‘Move over Obama, we’re going to take the wheel now.’”